Sustainable Development alive and well in the U.S.
by Sharon Shumate

  July 31, 2001 - Economical Sustainable Development.  Many UN summits in the 1990's, including the Earth Summit in Rio in 1992 provided for the creation of the Commission for Sustainable Development and the creation of the non-government organization Green Cross International, headed by the former president of the USSR, Mikhail Gorbachev. (www.greencrossinternational.net)

   President Clinton signed the Biodiversity Treaty at the UN Summit in Rio and started implementing policies of Sustainable Development in the United States even though Congress never ratified this treaty.

   National Goals of Sustainable Development adopted by Washington State Department of Ecology include, Conservation and Preservation of Nature – land, air, water, and biodiversity... Sustainable Communities, people work together to create healthy communities where natural and historic resources are preserved and GROWTH IS CONTAINED... (www.ecy.wa.gov/sustainability)

   Mikhail Gorbachev, president of Green Cross International and implementer of Sustainable Development uses terms "unsustainable irrigation schemes, centralized communist system, stakeholder participation, unregulated free market, and our two severe environmental problems, freshwater and climate change".

("Our Planet", UNEP's Magazine Volume 11, No. 3, 2001)

   Is Sustainable Development being used to turn off the irrigation water to our farmers, (unsustainable irrigation scheme), create watershed planning units, economic development units, etc. (stakeholder participation), NAFTA, GATT, World Trade Organization (unregulated free market) and impose restrictions for the use of fresh water and all our natural resources including timber?

   Is this really Sustainable Development or are these goals implementing USSR's communist threat to the United States "We will destroy you from within"?

Sharon Shumate is a researcher and writer residing in Republic, WA